Calvinist Apologist Leaves Christianity | Tyler Vela

Calvinist Apologist Leaves Christianity | Tyler Vela

In a surprising turn of events, Tyler Vela, a prominent online advocate for Christianity, has publicly renounced his faith. This announcement has sent shockwaves through the Christian community, though it's likely that some adherents will resort to the tired old "no true Scotsman" fallacy to distance themselves from his departure.

Nonetheless, Vela's decision to abandon his once deeply-held beliefs is a significant one, and here he sit's down with MythVision to explain his reasoning behind this dramatic shift in perspective.

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[_Warm_Bread]

Mad props to Tyler. It takes an incredible amount of courage to leave the faith when you have so much invested both relationally and financially by staying. Tyler and Derek are the most terrifying type of former xtians. Incredibly well informed, kind, empathetic, and sincere.

[silverlining]

Hearing Tyler speak about Christianity in this way feels like I've slipped into an alternate universe. My mind is blown that someone like him left. Amazing!

[caitlynaizpiri]

Really enjoying this talk as reformed theology was my last stop trying to hold onto my faith. Then when the Bible finally fell apart looked at if I could be a progressive Christian—but didn’t see the point for me when the Bible had already fallen apart. So relatable and loved the discussion.

[timo]

Whoa!!! I saw a debate with this guy one time. Arrogant apologist. Thankfully the religious scales fell from his eyes!

[satie]

Awesome interview. Thank you Tyler for being honest with yourself and truly thinking things through. Most people won't dare.

[Zictomorph]

@MythVisionPodcast, can you bring back Tyler in a year? Would love to see his journey continuing.

[johngagnon]

I enjoy hearing deconversion stories because for the longest time I felt like no one understood the mental and emotional rollercoaster I had gone through as my faith slipped from my grasp. Knowing that the steps led me from devout to dispirited were at least somewhat normal.

[albionicamerican]

I'm an atheist, but I think we should believe in the rapture: We can see that Christians are starting to disappear.

[hopeisorange]

What thing I miss about being a mainstream Christianity is the Community aspect. I grew up as a missionary kid in a “third world” Muslim country. Everyone was our “Aunt” and “Uncle”. Then back in the states the Church community. But I never felt fully “in” the group because I always had questions.
In around 2012 I started pursuing my questions. Who changed the Sabbath, why is the name of God not in the English Bible, why do we do feel it’s OK to co-opt pagan ceremonies and traditions into faith in a God who hates “mixing”.

[paulsparks]

The obvious Apologetics Union reaction: "He was never a true Christian." Great interview.

[helly]

A big thank you to anyone with the stones to come out of their religion, esp Christianity.
I was deeply troubled for so long wondering why I never felt anything, even during my darkest days. I was always wondering why god was cursing me over and over with terrible situations growing up. It messed up a good part of my early life and early adulthood.

To hear others say there is nothing there is so validating. To know I'm just normal, not cursed almost ironically feels a bit like a blessing to find out haha!

[hermenutic]

I can't express the relief I felt listening to the testimony. I am a former Seventh day Adventist.
I gave up Christianity but kept God and Jesus as Logos and that has made all the difference for my life of faith.
My faith is more real to me now in the sense that understanding Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos connects me to the life, the source, of existence. Which is what Jesus says he is in the gospel of John and the apostle Paul describes as the fellowship of the Mystery.
The Mystery is existence. Meditating on Jesus as Logos makes sense of that notion to me.

[eximusic]

Becoming an atheist out of religion usually takes several steps.

[stultusvenator]

WOW he took thew red pill,
well done and kudos he had the courage to open mindedly follow the 'evidence' and facts to the reasonable and logical conclusion.
This is the hope we have for a better future. Great to see he had the moral strength and intellectual fortitude to take the steps to begin recovery, I hope it goes well for him and he can shed some light on the behind the curtain shenanigans of The Apologetics Industry.

[charlesl]

Anyone who is honest with a little of critical thinking, is hard to believe the “god “after reading the whole bible.

[jwmmitch]

Ok that question about "would you push a button and go back to believing" is really bringing things to the surface for me as I start thinking about it.
1 in my current beliefs I'm certain I would deconvert again. I believe I would follow the path I was in that lead me here
2 thinking that I would eventually end up back where I am as an atheist, I see that the delay would only mean I caused more harm as a Christian
3 that highlights just how damaging and dangerous I firmly believe Christianity (and largely all religion) is

[melancholymoshpit]

I just woke up and had a couple of members of a local church knock on my door. They invited me to their church this tomorrow. I told them the timing is funny because I'm currently going through a deconstruction of Christianity right now.

I gave them my background (grew up going to church, dad was a pastor, spent years really digging deep and studying the bible) and tried informing them on the context in which the scriptures were created. I brought up the older creation myths, the older flood myths, the older death, burial, and resurrection myths, the borrowing from Homer, the influence of Plato, etc, etc.

Being an ex-Christian I already knew what their responses would be. All of those other myths were wrong and the bible was right. All of the other myths were inaccurate and the bible was the accurate word of God. They didn't really respond to the blatant parallels to Homeric texts but instead went back to having faith.

One of the men literally said, "Sometimes we may read something in the bible that doesn't seem to make sense or that we don't understand and we have to just take those things on faith that they are true and from God." He then went on to say that since I grew up going to church if I reject that faith then I _"...know what the consequences are..."_ I immediately clocked the fear-mongering tactic and just moved passed it.

This is why in my deconstruction I have given myself a basic rule that I typically won't discuss these things with Christians because they have a difficult time stepping outside of their own worldview to see things from a new perspective. When I was a practicing Christian all I wanted was the truth. Even before getting to the place I am now I already started seeing how most churches and Christians were contradicting the bible. This pushed me to dig even deeper and ultimately see all of the influences and social traditions that predate scripture that have made their way into Judaism and Christianity.

For most Christians (not all), the perspective is that no matter how much the bible replicates and copies other traditions, myths, and writings that came long before it, the bible is the inerrant word of God. They ignore the contradictions, they ignore the state of the world at the time of these writings, they ignore the ancient worldview (polytheistic/Yahweh being just one of many gods in the pantheon of gods), they ignore the fact that a lot of these writings have unknown authors and were written long after the death of Jesus.

I find all of this stuff personally fascinating, because as I've said before, my greatest desire is for the truth. My own anecdotal experience tells me that a lot of Christians are less interested in truth and more interested in a version of the truth that they refuse to test and unravel.

[panninggazz]

Ex Presbyterian /Calvary Chapel. Left around 1971 . But continued to work with the culture for two more years.
Have spent the last 50+ years understanding and studying undue influence. But, I have had spiritual experiences on and off over the decades, which I kept to myself. Watched friends and family convert to Santeria, Paganism (charismatic conversions). Which had me experiment with these other rites (interesting) I also published with S/R Press for years.
And this channel has been great for me. Thank you for all you do. I think it is important to separate the undue influence from the other strangeness .
This new fad of people converting a to Christianity is very interesting.
Tyler jumping ship during this time reminds me of how I jumped during the rise of the Jesus Freak/ Pagan revival.

Looking forward to hearing everything!

[justinwimer]

I’m glad you made your way out. As a fellow ex Christian, I went from a Calvinist to an open theist. I think it would be fun to have a debate on Calvinism versus Open Theism, because I found open theism the most persuasive towards the end of my faith. I’ve actually persuaded a number of Calvinists over to Open Theism in my day 😂 Greg Boyd was very persuasive lol

[margaretdevelden]

Tyler. Loved listening to you. 1. Humans know and mostly agree what love is and what it isn't. We communicate with each other. That's how we decide and know. God's love is full spectrum chaos. There exists no coherent communication between humans and any God. The one thing, it seems, that you most wanted from God. It was moving to hear you talk about that. I had a very similar experience on my way out. Wishing you peace and joy, Tyler It's a new and lovely world. Oh, Derek was asking about the sense of freedom - totally Derek. Liberation! I could think about any thing I wanted to think about. I could imagine anything I felt like imagining. And I could talk about any of those things with all other atheists. I NEVER experienced such freedom and safety when I was a progressive reformed calvinist.